Major Motoko Kusanagi's Sexuality

Full cyborg, thoroughly hot, mildly psychotic, bisexual: meet Major Motoko Kusanagi. Yes, she could look like Jameson, an ugly box-like outdated shell inhabited by Iwasaki who seems to have sold his organs out of greed, but she doesn’t look like that. Motoko is an altogether different type of cyborg. Sensual. Deathly. Lonely. Full of enhanced parts illegal for sale to ordinary people who do not work for the government.

When you're full prosthetic, can you still have sex? That’s the question that the street kid in episode 17 of S. A. C. 2nd GIG (Mother and Child / Red Data) asks Motoko Kusanagi when he has a chance to spend a night with her in the same bed. Major turned toward him and held the sheet open: “You care to find out?” The kid was clearly not prepared for that. “Some other time,” he said.

Yes, she can. However, it’s not something people usually have. It’s brainsex. Actually, we can see her participating in a lesbian cyber-threesome in the original Masamune Shirow’s manga (chapter 3, Junk Jungle). So pornographic that it was cut from the original American release (the second 2004 edition has it unedited). Later in the manga Motoko Kusanagi also dates a guy from Section 1 for seven months, which is considered to be her “new record”.

Mamoru Oshii’s 1995 anime film is rather chaste as for sexual overtones, even though Batou’s affection towards Motoko is clearly emphasized. The two girls, Kurutan and Ran-chan, appear again in Motoko’s bed in the Stand Alone Complex, episode 5 (The Inviting Bird Will Chant / Decoy), even though Motoko came to see Kurutan in order to use her external memory device as part of her investigation of the Laughing Man case, and not to have sex with her friend. Kurutan’s appearance in episode 22 (Corporate Graft / Scandal), where Motoko has to perform body swap and invites her friend as a witness, refers to the manga’s chapter 5 (Megatech Machine 2: The Making of a Cyborg), where we learn that Kurutan is a nurse who is accustomed to work with cyborgs. Kurutan the nurse also appears in episode 8 (The Fortunate Ones / Missing Hearts), which gives several important keys as for Motoko’s past. Kurutan’s comment that Motoko hasn’t even bothered to come over when she has asked her refers to chapter 3 of the manga.

My next two posts will be about Major Kusanagi’s sexuality as seen in her relationships with Batou and Hideo Kuze. In the meantime, I’d suggest you to read Haruki Murakami’s On seeing the 100% perfect girl one beautiful April morning, if you have it at hand. It will help a lot to understand the last episode of the S. A. C. 2nd GIG. The Book of Genesis will, too.